Sifting through some of my older music the other day, I came across an album, Voice of America, Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul, 1984. I barely recalled it came out a few weeks before Springsteen’s Born in the U. S. A. Stevie Van Zandt had an extensive role in producing both albums.
Then it hit me—“I Am a Patriot”, a song activists of the day pointed to as an example of how patriotism didn’t require blind loyalty, was on Voice of America, a song later covered by Jackson Browne in 1989, and then Pearl Jam in 2000. In fact, most music historians (actually, just my friends with a few beers in them), think that it was a Jackson Browne song. Nope, it was little Stevie and nobody ever performed it better than him and the wildly talented Disciples of Soul.
Browsing nostalgically through my old albums and now layering those memories with newly proud thoughts of my 9-year old granddaughter’s first foray—postcards—into political activism for Kamala, made me try to remember the lyrics.
My memory has deserted me of late, so I consulted the Google machine. Reading the lyrics, it struck me that the words were meaningful even now as conservatives and progressives, Republicans and Democrats are coming together—country before party—in a momentous effort to save democracy and protect our freedoms. As I listened to the lyrics, I heard something else and realized the words, «She said, ‘I want to run like the lion, released from the cages, released from the rages burning in my heart tonight’» might also be a mini-anthem for all the strong, independent women who are toiling so hard this election cycle to throw off the shackles freedom-sucking and cruel abortion restrictions have bound them with.
Another Substacker had remarked my granddaughter sounded like a future activist and sitting there now focused on my own activist past, I suddenly recalled, going even further back, almost 15 years further back, my stint in the Students for a Democratic Society, the SDS.
Although I considered myself a legitimate political activist, participating in many anti-war protests of the time, my desire to expand my participation by joining the SDS was, I now sheepishly remembered, just a horny teenage boy trying to get in Libby Jordan’s big sister’s pants, one of the hottest women I knew at the time and a card-carrying member of, yep, the SDS.
Well, I’m old, turned 70 this year and no idea what happened to Libby Jordan’s big sister. Maybe this threadbare connection to my past, in the form of this forgotten song, will mean as much to some of you as it still does to me, especially now.
I Am a Patriot
And the river opens for the righteous, someday
I was walking with my brother
And he wondered what's on my mind
I said what I believe in my soul
Ain't what I see with my eyes
And we can't turn our backs this time
I am a patriot, and I love my country
Because my country is all I know
I want to be with my family, the people who understand me
I've got nowhere else to go
And the river opens for the righteous
And the river opens for the righteous
And the river opens for the righteous, someday
And I was talking with my sister
She looked so fine
I said, "Baby, what's on your mind?"
She said, "I want to run like the lion
Released from the cages
Released from the rages
Burning in my heart tonight"
And I ain't no communist
And I ain't no capitalist
And I ain't no socialist
And I ain't no imperialist
And I ain't no democrat
And I ain't no republican
I only know one party
And it is freedom
I am, I am, I am
I am a patriot, and I love my country
Because my country is all I know
And the river opens for the righteous
And the river opens for the righteous
And the river opens for the righteous, someday.